


All of Time and Space

by DelilahBlueEyes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahBlueEyes/pseuds/DelilahBlueEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regeneration scene from The Parting of the Ways, written with Rumbelle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of Time and Space

Isabelle French was ready to crawl out of her skin with boredom. She hadn’t had the money or the inclination to go to college. She’d wanted to travel and see the world and meet people who lived completely different to anything she knew. Instead she’d fallen into a department shop job straight out of high school and shed her grand world travel plans somewhere after the first four months of monotony set in. Every day was the same. Wake up at 7:30, kiss her father goodbye, catch the bus downtown, fold clothes, answer stupid questions with a sugary smile on her face, have chips for lunch, answer more stupid questions then clean up and go home again. Most days she met Gaston somewhere for lunch and he’d joke and brag and kiss her lightly when he left. He was sweet enough and they’d been together for years. He had never really understood why she would want to leave the life she had, to go hike tall mountains and wander through dusty ruins but then, Gaston had always been a bit of a homebody.

She had no way of knowing that when she woke up on what she thought was going to be another mind numbingly boring day, that when she slipped on jeans she was sure she hadn’t washed in a while and stumbled out the door that everything was about to change.

 

 

_“I’m the doctor, by the way. What’s your name?”_

_“Belle.”_

_“Nice to meet you, Belle. Run for your life!”_

 

 

And she had. She’d run from her job (not that there was two bricks left to stack together after he blew up the shop), she’d run from her strangely platonic relationship and she’d run from the father who’d wanted to keep her close more than he’d wanted her to be happy. And as a result she’d run straight off her planet in the company of a man more complicated than she could ever have guessed.

 

 

_“Right then. I’ll be off. Unless, ah, I don’t know, you could come with me.”_

_She’d declined and with a gust of wind, a strange wheezing, grating noise the alleyway had been empty. But as she began to coax Gaston to his feet a shadow fell over them and the big blue box was there again._

_“By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?”_

_She’d pressed a peck to Gaston’s cheek and scampered into the impossible, bigger-on-the-inside machine and gone without a second thought._

 

 

The Doctor. A happy, bounding puppy trapped in a man’s body. His wide, goofy grin that looked too large for his sharp face became as familiar as her own in those first days, as they’d become used to each other. The poor lonely man (for lonely he was. He wouldn’t admit it, but she knew, could see it whenever he thought she wasn’t looking) was easier to read than he probably would have liked. She’d joked about how impressive he thought he was and he’d assured her that he was, in fact, very impressive. Though apparently his grasp of human sentimentality was not quite up to scratch, when the first trip they’d taken was to the moment of her planet’s demise. And that was the other side of it. It was amazing how his moods could swing from mischievous to unholy rage in the course of seconds. The look in his eyes when someone crossed him… Mercurial would hardly cover it. She learned enough to fear his anger, but never that it would be turned against her because though he was a little rough around the edges, he was kind to her. In all their travels he’d only ever shown her wonders that she couldn’t have possibly imagined in her stuffy, untidy bedroom and his obvious delight at teaching her the secrets of the universe was more endearing than any half-hearted compliment Gaston had given her. It was amazing how quickly she’d fallen into the routine that was the Doctor’s daily life. The adrenaline, the terror, the exhilaration. At nineteen years old she’d seen and done more than she’d ever dreamed of. She’d been chased by monsters, had tea with aliens, and then whatever you could call her brief encounter with the man who’d tried to sell them a piece of space junk during an air raid in 1941. Captain Jack Harkness.

 

Future, past, earth, space. The running was a bit of a trial, considering all the days and days of chips for lunch, but she soon shaped up and could even outrun him on occasion. She went anywhere and everywhere the Doctor would take her and it was, as he was always saying, fantastic. Of course, everything changed when he did.

 

 

_“Doctor!”_

_He was in pain, doubled over with his arm pressed against his stomach. She tried to help but he told her to stay away. She’d thought he was just joking, just rambling nonsense like he always seemed to do. But he explained about his species’ unique abilities. How he had absorbed the time energy from her, and how he was going to change now. He wouldn’t be the same. She tried to listen, really she did. But all that came through was a sense of helplessness and fear._

_“Belle, before I go I just wanna tell you - you were fantastic… absolutely fantastic… and d’you know what?” She just stared at him, too frightened and disbelieving to do much else. What was happening to her Doctor?_

_“So was I.”_

 

 

And then the world shifted, and she was left with a complete stranger.


End file.
